5 ms·

Off topic but what would the selling price for Yahoo have to be for MM to be considered a success? 20B, 100B,..

dudul 10y ago
[ignore: Didn't they get an offer from Microsoft a few years ago for 125B or something?] I think what makes it a huge failure is that 5B is basically what they spent just to acquire one company. Edit: Based on the replies the first part of my comment is inaccurate.
- yesplorer 10y ago
  No. The $125b was the valuation during the 1990s. Microsoft offered way less - $44b.
  - dudul 10y ago
    OK, my bad, I got confused with the numbers :)
- akkartik 10y ago
  The Microsoft offer was for $45B: http://news.microsoft.com/2008/02/01/microsoft-proposes-acquisition-of-yahoo-for-31-per-share http://news.microsoft.com/2008/02/01/microsoft-proposes-acqu... The market cap of Yahoo was still around half that when Mayer was appointed. But that was all from their stake in Alibaba, which has already been spun off. The rest of Yahoo had a negative value, I think. So it's gone from 0 (conservatively) to $5B.
scholia 10y ago
Success would have been growing revenues, instead of watching them decline. Success would have been at least one really successful mobile app. Success would have been not selling Yahoo....
- stinkytaco 10y ago
  Yahoo is a publicly traded company. Selling Yahoo went very well for the shareholders and the first rule for any publicly traded company is to maximize shareholder value. I think it's very clear that the goal when she was hired was to sell the company and get the shareholder's some payout. Considering where the company was when she came in, I'd say she did an admirable job at this. You might say that's not success, but I think the (shareholder elected) board had the company on that trajectory before she was hired. She came in to finish the job.
  - excitom 10y ago
    > the first rule for any publicly traded company is to maximize shareholder value. It always bothers me to see this, as I feel it is the reason many companies decline. The first rule should be "make the customers happy" and the second rule should be "keep the employees happy" since happy employees help implement the first rule. If rule one and two are achieved then as a side effect shareholder value is maximized.
    - iopq 10y ago
      >The first rule should be "make the customers happy" and the second rule should be "keep the employees happy" if you burn through your cash reserves doing those things and now you don't have any money, that doesn't do anything for you since you burned all your cash - even if employees and customers are happy the first rule should be "make money", the second rule should be "spend less money than you make" if those two are achieved, THEN shareholder value is maximized
      - pfarnsworth 10y ago
        Not true. Sometimes shareholders want metrics like Return on Equity, which forces the hand of management to sell profitable parts of the business... but not profitable enough. That's the insanity of trying to maximize shareholder value.

dudul 10y ago

[ignore: Didn't they get an offer from Microsoft a few years ago for 125B or something?] I think what makes it a huge failure is that 5B is basically what they spent just to acquire one company. Edit: Based on the replies the first part of my comment is inaccurate.

yesplorer 10y ago
No. The $125b was the valuation during the 1990s. Microsoft offered way less - $44b.
- dudul 10y ago
  OK, my bad, I got confused with the numbers :)
akkartik 10y ago
The Microsoft offer was for $45B: http://news.microsoft.com/2008/02/01/microsoft-proposes-acquisition-of-yahoo-for-31-per-share http://news.microsoft.com/2008/02/01/microsoft-proposes-acqu... The market cap of Yahoo was still around half that when Mayer was appointed. But that was all from their stake in Alibaba, which has already been spun off. The rest of Yahoo had a negative value, I think. So it's gone from 0 (conservatively) to $5B.

scholia 10y ago

Success would have been growing revenues, instead of watching them decline. Success would have been at least one really successful mobile app. Success would have been not selling Yahoo....

stinkytaco 10y ago
Yahoo is a publicly traded company. Selling Yahoo went very well for the shareholders and the first rule for any publicly traded company is to maximize shareholder value. I think it's very clear that the goal when she was hired was to sell the company and get the shareholder's some payout. Considering where the company was when she came in, I'd say she did an admirable job at this. You might say that's not success, but I think the (shareholder elected) board had the company on that trajectory before she was hired. She came in to finish the job.
- excitom 10y ago
  > the first rule for any publicly traded company is to maximize shareholder value. It always bothers me to see this, as I feel it is the reason many companies decline. The first rule should be "make the customers happy" and the second rule should be "keep the employees happy" since happy employees help implement the first rule. If rule one and two are achieved then as a side effect shareholder value is maximized.
  - iopq 10y ago
    >The first rule should be "make the customers happy" and the second rule should be "keep the employees happy" if you burn through your cash reserves doing those things and now you don't have any money, that doesn't do anything for you since you burned all your cash - even if employees and customers are happy the first rule should be "make money", the second rule should be "spend less money than you make" if those two are achieved, THEN shareholder value is maximized
    - pfarnsworth 10y ago
      Not true. Sometimes shareholders want metrics like Return on Equity, which forces the hand of management to sell profitable parts of the business... but not profitable enough. That's the insanity of trying to maximize shareholder value.